It was Lisa's turn to fall prey to the viral demons, and her job is crazy right now, so we've postponed the inauguration of our writing meetings until the end of the month. Thus, you all get to nag me so I don't just let the novel sit until that point. Because I will. I should have a badge that identifies me as an official "Devotee of Slack".
Instead of going out to Starbucks by myself last night (which I should have), I started reading "The First Five Pages: A Writer's Guide to Staying Out of the Rejection Pile" by Noah T. Lukeman. So I was reading about writing, even I wasn't actually writing. That counts, right?
All in all, I like the book, but it feels a bit elementary in some of the early sections. That's not a criticism (it's all excellent advice, and well put), but it's just that I already know most of what he's talking about, so it's not holding my attention very well. Still, some of the exercises he gives at the ends of the chapters look pretty useful, especially the one on taking control of adverbs and adjectives (I have a very bad habit of filling my first drafts with descriptive adverbs as a shortcut, just so I can get the basic form of the story down), and I like the tone and approach he uses. And I'm not even halfway through the book, so perhaps I should just shut up until I'm done with it...
So far, though, I think I like "The Forest for the Trees : An Editor's Advice to Writers" by Betsy Lerner better. That may be because it had a more anecdotal feel, rather than a direct "how not to" approach. That feel was one of the things I enjoyed most about Stephen King's "On Writing".